Warner Vetoes Offshore Drilling Bill

Environmentalists praise the governor for rejecting the measure, which would have supported gas exploration.

Gov. Mark R. Warner vetoed a bill Tuesday that called for opening the door to natural gas exploration and drilling off Virginia's coast.

The measure pitted the oil and gas industry against environmentalists from across the country.

Environmentalists cheered Warner's decision.

"That's just terrific," said Michael Town, director of the Sierra Club's Virginia chapter. "It shows strong support for protecting the coast, and not just in Virginia. Eyes from around the country have been watching. This is a resounding victory."

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Frank Wagner, R-Virginia Beach, would have ordered the state's lobbyists to work with the congressional delegation and federal agencies to lift the 22-year-old federal ban on offshore gas and oil exploration or drilling on both the East and West coasts.

The ban was enacted in 1983, and Congress has since rebuffed all efforts to lift it.

Environmentalists viewed Wagner's bill as part of a new industry strategy to shift the battleground from Washington, D.C., to coastal state legislatures.

Pre-moratorium offshore gas and oil surveys found little evidence of commercially viable oil deposits off Virginia's coast, but the industry has long wanted to drill off the coast of Florida and North Carolina.

The bill now returns to the General Assembly for a possible override of Warner's veto, but that appears to be unlikely. The measure passed the House on a 54-43 vote, well short of the two-thirds majority needed to overturn a veto.

It was the only bill Warner vetoed out of the hundreds sent to his desk during this year's General Assembly session.

In his veto, he objected to the bill on mostly procedural grounds, without taking a stance on whether the federal moratorium should be lifted.

The bill encroaches on the governor's right to direct the activities of the state's lobbying office, and it advocates for a federal bill to lift the moratorium that is only a draft at this point, Warner said in a formal veto message.

"It is impossible to adequately form an opinion on federal legislation that does not yet exist," Warner said. "Clearly, there are strong feelings on both sides -- I know in Hampton Roads -- but I think we need to take a more prudent approach in looking at this, particularly before even Congress proposes legislation."

The Virginia measure received little attention during the legislature's six-week session, partly because the bill never went through either House or Senate environmental committees.

The bill originally called for lobbying efforts to lift the moratorium just on natural-gas surveying off the state's coastline. After it cleared the Senate, however, Wagner had it amended in a House committee to take the measure a step further -- to permit surveying, exploration and drilling for natural gas, without specifically prohibiting oil drilling.

Del. Harvey Morgan, R-Gloucester, tried to weaken the bill on the House floor, seeking to amend it back to its original form. He failed.

"There wasn't any discussion beforehand," he said Monday. "It just appeared. I was shocked that it was broadened in committee. I thought mapping (potential gas deposits offshore) was OK, because that doesn't hurt anything."

He said he wanted more discussion about the benefits and drawbacks of full-fledged drilling operations for gas or oil.

Virginia Beach's mayor, Meyera Oberndorf, opposes any effort to construct gas or oil derricks off her city's coastline, cornerstone of a $700 million a year tourism industry, and praised Warner's veto.

"Thank God," she said. "We have not just a tourism industry but some very fragile ecosystems. There was no public input and no public debate. It's folly. We better not blink. These are very, very adept politicians."

Industry representatives estimated $3.5 billion worth of natural gas could be tapped on the Outer Continental Shelf off East Coast states, deposits that were not commercially viable in the 1970s and 1980s but might be now because of improved technology.

With the cost of natural gas tripling over the past five years, new energy sources need to be found, and drilling now poses fewer environmental hazards than in the past, Wagner said.

"I am deeply disappointed in the governor vetoing" the bill, Wagner said in a press release. "Virginians are demanding a solution to skyrocketing fuel bills and (this measure) offered one key building block to that solution."

Wagner said he'll try again next year, when Warner is out of office and a new governor is elected.

The oil and gas industry, joined by the Virginia Manufacturers Association, lobbied the governor heavily to sign the bill.

In turn, environmentalists from across the country agitated for Warner to veto the measure, telling him Virginia was being used as a pawn in a larger campaign to open up drilling off the coasts of other states as well.